There is a secret message if you play Eminem's 'My Name Is' backwards

With a 20+ year career under his belt, it's probably safe to say that Eminem knows what he's doing when it comes to music. His first big success came in 1999 with The Slim Shady LP, which made Marshall Mathers a household name across America.

The most popular track on that album was, of course, My Name Is. Despite peaking at number 36 in the top 100 charts, it still proves to be an insanely successful track more than 18 years later, and even people who aren't fans of the rapper are likely to know a line or two at least.

What a lot of people don't realize about the song, however, is that it has a secret (and insanely clever) message.

For almost two decades, Eminem's track has been playing on radios and iPods and - if you're old enough - minidiscs around the world, but most of us never had a clue about the deeper layer of meaning. However, thanks to YouTube and a fan with maybe a little bit too much time on their hands, the secret of Shady's backward lyrics have been revealed to the world.

If you play the track normally, you hear the familiar chorus: "My name is, my name is, my name is".

However, when reversed, the words transform into: "It's Eminem, it's Eminem, it's Eminem, it's slim". Seriously, if you don't believe it, take a listen for yourself.

Fans claim to have found secret backward messages in other Eminem hits, too - but not everyone is convinced about them.

Not Afraid, the lead single on Eminem's 2010 album, Recovery, seems to allude to the conspiracy theory that Tupac is still alive. If you play it in reverse, the lyrics resemble something like. “We’ll all forget, but [Tu]Pac’s scared and in Colombia from now on."

Others have said that the same song also describes Shady's struggle with the Illuminati. “I swear their filthy hands shall die, I miss my family, can’t live with things I lost,” is what you apparently get if you play one part of the song backwards.

Credit: Getty

On his more recent tracks, though, Mathers seems to have ditched the subliminal messages for an outright political agenda. In fact, his most recent album, Revival, has several songs that take aim at President Donald Trump.

In Untouchable, he refers to Trump's attack on NFL players kneeling during the national anthem:

“But they're gonna say you're tryin' to take an irrational stance/ If you try to slander the flag but/ Somebody has to be the sacrificial lamb/ So they call it a Kaepernick tantrum/ If you don't stand for the national anthem.”

And, in Like Home, he implies that Trump has ties to the KKK and racist far right:

"Someone get this Aryan a sheet/ Time to bury him, so tell him to prepare to get impeached/ Everybody on your feet/ This is where terrorism and heroism meets, square up in the streets."

While I can definitely see what Eminem is getting at in his latest tracks, I'm not entirely buying the idea that he intended for those other backward messages to be there in the earlier ones. He's definitely got talent for cryptic lyrics - but taking hidden digs at the Illuminati? That might be a bit too far-fetched.